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We finally have our first storm of this winter. We had our first snow a week ago, but it was less than a centimeter deep. Useless. Today though there is a real-deal blizzard outside.

We took the kids out in the morning and it was already several feet deep in some places. And it was just morning. It keeps snowing at the full strength now and probably the end result will be quite impressive.

The snow was non-sticky type, so we couldn’t build a snowman or anything like that. But kids played with a couple of buckets, filling them with snow and building mini snow castles.

Kids had a ton of fun. Arosha already knows well enough what snow is, but Anюta seemed to be fairly impressed as last year she was still too little to remember anything.

The obvious downside to all this is the fact that I might have a hard time undigging the car when the time comes. On the other hand if the previous winters are any indication I might just drive right out.

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By Russian standards spring starts on March 1st. By American standard our spring has started on March 20th. As in yesterday. However yesterday we had yet another snowstorm. The snow was coming down all day long and well into the night.

What made yesterday different was how the tree branches got blanketed in snow. In all the snowstorms that we had this year it hasn’t happened. The streets were beautiful. I took a picture out of our window in the evening and was planning to go out again in the morning. Alas the wind blew the snow off and the fairy tale was gone.

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Several days ago we had a bit of snow on the ground. The weather was getting warm, so the snow was very sticky. We tried making a snowman and it was working very well. I showed Arosha how to start rolling a snowball and he managed to make a huge one all by himself. He wanted to make a snowman for a long while, but we never had the right kind of snow. So we was very excited when he was able to build his own snowman for the first time.

Then yesterday we got hit by the first real snow storm for the first time this year. Today is even worse. All the roads got closed. We got an alert message saying that no cars are allowed on the street after 11PM. All the major highways got closed. Schools are closed. Everything has come to a halt. I’ve actually never seen any road closures before.

Yesterday we went for a short walk and I made several photographs of kids playing in the snow. They love it. Even if they are freezing they don’t want to go home. They were actually the only kids on the playground.

Today we were supposed to get the bulk of the snow, but according to the news it seems that it mostly missed New York City — although we still got a good amount of snow, and it all went towards Boston. I also parked my car on the alternative side of the street, so hopefully it shouldn’t be buried by snowplows.

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This year’s winter is proving to be quite a bit more “wintery” than the last two. No surprise to us — Alёna’s mom is here after all. At this point I lost count of real nice snowstorms that we had. We’re getting another one tomorrow and apparently an even bigger one on Sunday.

Yesterday I decided to work from home in order to avoid a commute like the one I had during the previous snow storm — only some 4 hours to get home. That means that we had to undig or maybe thaw the car out in the morning today.

Looks like snow melted some and then froze over again. The hardest part was trying to remove a solid block of ice that formed between one of the outside mirrors and the windows of the car. After the windows were cleaned I got to enjoy 4MATIC again — zero effort to get out from behind a solid ice wall formed by all the plow trucks.

The great thing is that this last snowstorm has made everything beautiful. I was driving to work and couldn’t help but think how great everything looks. All the trees were covered in snow. I haven’t noticed this before, so I don’t know what made this storm different. But, again, surroundings and trees in particular just look great now.

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It looks like we timed well our truck purchase. This winter is proving to be quite snowy already and there is no way I would’ve been able to get home yesterday if I was driving a rear-wheel-drive car. From many years of experience — if it’s snowing — you let the car sit. It is quite hard to get it around the block, forget about 60 mile commute.

I have claimed for years that there is zero need for me to have an all-wheel-drive car, but yesterday it sure felt nice to be in a car with a grip of 4MATIC — Mercedes-Benz implementation of all-wheel-drive. I think I do not want any other car without this option. Even little C-Class that we had for several days came with it and I felt really comfortable driving it in the snow.

The car performed well all around. It felt like my personal little fortress — calm, warm, stable and rather well self-driving while stuck in traffic thanks to Distronic. So far I’m very happy. However at the moment our MB must be the dirtiest car in all of Brooklyn.

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When we left Port Angles behind we had nowhere to rush. We had a full day to get to our next destination — Mounthaven Resort located right on the edge of Mount Rainier National Park in a tiny town of Ashford. This time we were driving around the eastern side of Olympic National Park and the road seemed very rural even though we were not that far away from Seattle. In order to get the same feeling one would have to get a lot farther away from New York. The only planned stop for the day was in a city of Olympia — the capital of Washington state.

Olympia

At some point in our travels years ago we decided that it would be cool to visit all state capitals and see what each capitol looks like. Olympia was a very small detour for us so we didn’t pass the chance up. Usually it’s very easy to find the capitol building itself as soon as you get into the city and Olympia was no exception. It was visible from afar. We parked our car and went for a short walk exploring the area.

Luckily for us the capitol building itself was open and we got to walk inside. We also got lucky with a stamp — a lot of capitol buildings that we visited in the past have a standardized stamp and Washington turned out to be one of such states. The building itself was quite impressive too with a pretty high dome.

Afterwards we walked around the area some more. Saw different state buildings such as courts, libraries and saw a governor’s mansion. Now that guy has a nice commute to work — just cross the street. Wonder if he somehow manages to get driven to his office. We took a bunch of pictures and were on our way.

Before leaving Olympia we decided to grab a nice lunch. We drove to a more busy street that we noticed when we were trying to get to the capitol and once we got there easily found parking near a restaurant that looked appealing. To my surprise Trip Adviser app declared that the restaurant was rated as #1 in Olympia. However it turned out that it is closed on weekends and even though it would be open because of the Father’s Day reservation was required. So we had to settle for some other cafe across the street that had a limited menu for lunch and the food was not all that great.

Elbe

On our way to the park we made a couple of short stops at several scenic overlooks and a bit longer of a stop at a small town of Elbe. What made Elbe interesting was the fact that it appeared to have an operational train station with old steam locomotives. And indeed we saw one departing from the station with a lot of whistling and smoke.

A whole bunch of old train cars were converted into different restaurants. Arosha really wanted to get inside one of them, but for some reason they all had signs that declared that one had to be 21 or over to get inside. We also visited one ancient looking grocery and bought some water. Also this town had some historic church. It was closed on this day, but we managed to visit it on our way out — it didn’t have the right kind of stamp though.

Mounthaven Resort

When we were looking for a place to stay at Mount Rainier National Park we wanted something close, so we wouldn’t have to drive back and forth to and from the park. Since everything inside the park was either sold out or very expensive I started looking for places right on the edges of the park. And to my surprise I found a nice cabin rentals a mile from the entrance — Mounthaven Resort. And not only that, but we could get a cabin with two bedrooms and for a very reasonable price to top it off.

When we arrived we found one of the owners on the property and got the keys to our cozy cabin named Pine. It was very much what I expected. It was very small and quite rustic (in a good sense of the word) inside. My parents were a bit surprised by its size and were wondering how we were going to fit in. However once they got over the initial “shock” they ended up enjoying it very much too. When we first entered it had a stale smell. I guess it wasn’t used for a while, because in several hours the smell was completely gone. The cabin had a small living room, kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms.

For Arosha we were given a thick mattress to put on a floor. At first we thought to put it down in the living room, but then we moved our double bed towards the wall and his mattress fit in the space right next to our bed. Needless to say Arosha was pretty happy about the fact.

Also I have to say that before, sleeping in the same room with Arosha was always problematic as he would wake up in the middle of the night and not fall asleep and so on. But now it was great. We would talk to each other, either discuss the day, or tell him some bed time story and we would all fall asleep and sleep easily past 8am, which is also quite unusual for Arosha.

The territory of the resort itself was located right inside a forest of old huge pines. Each cabin also had a bunch of wooden chairs outside around a brick fire pit which we got to use for two nights. The firewood was given to us by the owners. There was also a nice playground for kids which Aroshka enjoyed very much. All in all this was a great place to stay at for our Rainier portion of the vacation.

For our first night we went for dinner to the closest place we could find which was less than a mile away from our cabin. The place was called Wildberry and was serving Nepal food including yak burgers and steaks. But since none of us were very hungry we got some soups and salads as far as I remember, but I’m sure that we didn’t eat any yaks.

Longmire and Paradise

This was our first full day in the park and this would be the time when we would see Mount Rainier itself for the first time. Even though our cabin was not all that far from it the fact that it was surrounded by 500 year old trees made it impossible to see. We caught our first glimpse of the mountain when we were approaching Longmire — the first stop with a visitor center.

This mountain that is an active stratovolcano was massive. It has an elevation of 14,411 feet at its summit and is covered by 26 major glaciers. Mount Rainier is 4ht most topographically prominent mountain peak in North America. In other words it was very impressive.

When at Longmire we went into the visitor center, talked to a ranger and put together a plan of action for the next two days and got our National Park passports stamped. By now Arosha really enjoyed our passport stamping stops and kept stamping a piece of paper of his own at every opportunity.

The plan for day one was to take a short hike along the bed of a river formed by one of the glaciers for unobstructed views of the mountain. After that we would drive up to Paradise — a valley at high elevation known for its views of the mountain and the subalpine flower covered meadows. Of course us being there in the middle of June meant that we were probably in for a lot of snow and zero flowers.

And so that’s what we did. We found the river trail and walked down into a boulder covered valley. There was a bridge constructed over the river out of an old fallen tree. Arosha enjoyed throwing stones into the river while I tried to take some shots of the mountain that would show itself from time to time from the clouds covering its top.

Of course as always it was really hard to capture the magnitude of this giant. In fact I think the best picture I took that conveys the size of Rainer was days later, when we were far gone from Mount Rainier National Park.

Our next stop was a small overlook near Christine Falls. The falls themselves were quite small in size compared to some of the previous ones that we got to see, but they were nicely framed by a small canyon and an old stone bridge over that canyon. We took a couple of pictures and moved on.

When we got to Paradise we were greeted by tons and tons of snow, as we expected. Not only summer wasn’t here, spring was far away as well. There was a huge visitor center and a large lodge. The meadows in the front and the mountain in the back were covered by multiple feet of snow. We took a short hike up that snow covered hill. Arosha was again very much excited to play in the snow and we all took turns running away from his snowball attacks.

After that we got our passports stamped at the visitor center, bought a couple of pins for our hats and decided to have an early lunch-o-dinner type of meal at the lodge. Food was not bad, but nothing special either.

On our way back we noticed another parking lot by Narada Falls. Now this one was indeed quite huge. We had to hike down a rather steep hill which was largely covered in ice. That vantage point gave a really nice view of the falls at about their middle point. I ended up not being able to take any decent pictures because of all the mist that was rising from the falling water that was instantly covering the lens. That was our last stop of the day.

We came back to our cabin, left Arosha and my parents out and drove to a nearby grocery store with Alёna. We bought some hot dogs, long metal forks and some other stuff. On our way we picked up a pile of firewood (we couldn’t find the owner of our resort at that point to ask him for some) and made a fire in our fire pit. We drank some nice beer, fried our hot dogs on open flames and had a nice evening snack. Arosha kept running around picking up all kinds of sticks from the forest and adding them into the fire, helping us to sustain it. It was great.

Day Two

On the second day we decided to venture further into the park and explore more of it. We were told by a ranger that our best chance of seeing some flowers was along the road beyond the valley of Paradise and that’s where we went without any real objectives. Our first stop of the day was Reflection Lake — a like named so simply because one could see a great reflection of Mount Rainier in it. Our problem was that there was not much of a like visible as it was covered by mountains of snow.

Arosha utilized an empty tin can from the nuts that we had as a shovel and had a blast playing with the snow. He was building mini-castles, throwing snowballs at everyone, but we didn’t really get any cool reflection pictures of the mountain.

After a while we got into our car and drove further. Everyone was starting to get tired of sitting so we pulled over into the first parking area we saw and it had a couple of trails leading off from here. We decided to take a short hike. This one turned out to be going down a rather steep hill with a promise of a river at the end. The trail itself was quite interesting as we found a multitude of different mushroom growing on its sides, including colorful fly agarics which Arosha recognized from his books.

Eventually my dad was starting to get tired so he decided to return back up. I was starting to get worried that it’s going to be pretty hard for Arosha to get all the way up as well. However Alёna and my mom wanted to reach the river since we already wend down so much. So I handed the camera to Alёna and turned back as well with Arosha. He had no problems getting back up and kept talking about lightsabers (that was a pretty common theme with him through all our hikes on this vacation) and mushrooms and looking for them again.

When we got back up we discovered that my dad decided to go somewhere as he probably was bored sitting there, waiting for us. I started yelling out for him, but he didn’t show up. Arosha seeing that I’m getting no response decided to join in. Apparently his loud high pitch voice was much more audible as my dad soon appeared. He said he haven’t heard me calling him, but he heard Arosha very well.

We sat down on a bench near a picnic table that was placed at the start of the trail and tried to take the experience in. Us, Pacific Northwest, Washington state, Mount Rainier National Park, magnificent forest. I always try to slow down during our vacations once in a while and take in the moment of being there in. However I find it very hard to actually be able to do that well. Somehow the only place that I was really able to do this last was in Tokyo. To really really feel it.

Not long after that my mom and Alёna came back up and told us that we were quite close to the river when we turned back. They showed us some pictures they took on their iPhones and our camera. After a short rest, we got back into our car and continued further along the road. The map indicated that there was a canyon of some kind nearby and we wanted to reach it.

The map didn’t lye. Indeed there was a scenic overview pullover soon after — Box Canyon. The canyon itself wasn’t very wide, but it was impressively deep. I found it hard, again, to capture the real magnitude of it. I did send out my mom in her red jacket onto an overview on the trail that was visible from the road to give the picture some sense of scale. It still looks nothing like being there though.

We decided to take a short hike here as well. And here we were actually rewarded with a meadow covered by blue flowers and Mount Rainier decided to show itself through the clouds in the background. The picture of that didn’t come out too well either. Flower are out of focus and the mountain’s scale is not really visible because of the other much lower mountains near our position. But because they were much closer they looked as big as Rainier, even though they are nothing like it. Nevertheless I was happy with getting to see at least some flowers.

On our way back to our cabin we stopped a couple of times along the road to take some pictures of flowers with valleys below. And we stopped near Reflection Lake again, since Arosha really wanted to play with the snow some more.

Before returning to our cabin we decided to grab an early dinner. Trip Adviser’s top pick was a place called Copper Creek Restaurant and that’s where we went. My memory is really blurry at this point about the food that we actually ate, but I remember that I did have a fish — not sure what kind now — and a beer. And it was very delicious. The service was great too.

We also stopped by a local grocery store again to get something for breakfast for the next day. Here poor Arosha had an accident. He told us that he need to go quickly and we thought he can hold it as he usually does. But soon he became very upset and told us that he needed new pants now. This kind of thing didn’t happen to Arosha in a long time, so we felt bad that we didn’t listen to him, especially considering that it turned out that this store did have a restroom.

After dinner we came back to our resort and built a fire again. That’s how we spent the rest of the evening. As a family, sitting in front of a warm fire on a chilly night, reminiscing and sharing our feelings about our experiences. It was great. In the morning we “puzzle-packed” our luggage into the trunk and were on our way to Seattle, speeding away from this beautiful park.

In conclusion I want to say that I don’t think I fully realized how huge Rainier was until days later when we were in Seattle. On our last day there we had a pretty clear day and Rainier became visible in the distance — towering over everything. It was enormous. So enormous in fact that when our plane took off and got above the clouds the peak of the mountain was still clearly visible rising even higher. That’s where I took my best picture of Mount Rainier on which you can really see its true magnitude.

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Tonight we finally got first snow of the winter that actually stuck to the ground. Arosha kept asking Alёna over and over throughout the past weeks when the winter would arrive already. So we all dressed up and went for a walk. It’s nice to have a playground right across the street.

Arosha had a lot of fun. He climbed all the structures in the park and took a ride on every single one of the slides in the park. All of them were extremely speedy because of the snow. Later on a couple of other families came out, but all the slides were snow free. Arosha did a thorough job. It was a fun evening.

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It is suddenly snowing outside. And quite heavily at that. Today is marks the first snowfall of this incoming winter. The snow itself is not sticking to the ground yet, but tree branches, cars and house roofs are turning white. The view out of our window is quite picturesque.

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Yesterday I took Alёna and her mom to Kings Plaza mall so they could shop for gifts to bring back to Minsk. Not the funnest exercise for most men and I wasn’t an exception. I however grabbed my camera with me and was wondering around, taking pictures of all kinds of things before security guard told me that I was acting against their policy and he would kick me out if I wouldn’t stop.

I did choose to stop because at this time it was REALLY snowing outside. First big snow of this winter. Right now all cars are buried up to their windows and everyone is working from home. Later today I have to go and dig-up the car. Didn’t really get any great snow storm shots either.

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Not all is good about the snow. On Thursday I had to drive to work and naturally the car was buried in hard ice. The just run huge trucks down the strips with massive snow plows and all the snow ends up on the cars. Then everything freezes over through out the night and in the morning you have a fun exercise.

It took me over an hour to get all the ice out of the way. It was frozen solid and luckily I was able to borrow a real sharp metal shovel to get the job done. A regular snow shovel would do nothing.

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And here is our mandatory snow storm photo. The storm is not nearly as bad as everyone predicted it would be, but I like the change of scenery. Not more than twice a year though, please.

I’m working from home and everyone from office is too. Alёna’s working from home as well. My mom is working from home. Shublik is definitely working from home. I think the schools are closed today also.